Well, I can’t say I’m surprised but after a whole year of hoping and praying that Microsoft and Asobo were sincere in their promise that this was a “sim for simmers”, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is nothing more than a game for gamers.
That said, it isn’t the core of the software that has tainted my opinion, but the business decisions of Microsoft/Asobo. The very fact that they would rather focus on Xbox and pretty scenery updates clearly demonstrate that they’re more interested in taking the easy route to satisfy and attract the gaming masses, rather than tackle the difficult issues and bugs which have been present since BEFORE release (I was in the alpha).
What is more disturbing though is the apparent abandonment of the VR side of the code. The entire wish list and bug list has gone completely unaddressed for well over 6 months. It almost feels like they’ve totally abandoned it, they’ve even managed to fail to add the new slider to the VR settings in the GUI. If they’re so quick to abandon one section of code, what else will they be prepared to turn a blind eye to in the future. Very worrying!
Like I said, I’m hardly surprised by any of this. The more pretty scenery they release, the more gamers they’ll pull in and the more money they’ll make. It’s just a shame that despite the communities best efforts to highlight issues and all of the promises that were made in the original Q&As, we’re just ignored over and over again.
Yea well, you hire the company who’s last success was RUSH: A Disney pixar adventure, now with Finding dory to make what is the worlds premier Flight Simulation property, you get what you’re gonna get.
It’s a shame because they literally had their success handed to them by Microsoft and still this was the best they could do.
The whole sim verses gamers thing is such a load of total snobbish nonsense. The sim is whatever you make it and whatever you want it to be. Its a game, its a sim, its both. Flying planes in real is a bit of game to some people. They’re playing, they’re having fun. Its what life is all about.
The idea that if you’re a flight simmer you’re somehow elevated above being a mere ‘gamer’ but virtue of supposedly doing something more serious sitting in front of a compute screen is frankly laughable. I do get the impression there are actually a fair few grown adults on this forum who believe that.
No, a sim is a SIM. Things need to work like real life, that what “Simulation” means. Otherwise it’s just a sim like game. And this was not sold as a sim like game, it’s MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR for crying out loud. It doesn’t even have a properly working avionics suite, just a pathetic cludge. A Cludge backed by a license from the manufacturer even.
It’s a toy. A toy using a real tools name.
And it’s a toy sold with a lot of broken and missing parts.
Except we’re not making it. Microsoft and Asobo both said they would be moving forward with a community driven ethos. What is disappointing is that statement was clearly nothing more than contrived nonsense.
You kind of said it yourself (and I’m finding it very pretty on Xbox).
I trust the money we refer to will allow the sim to progress for the ‘top-end’ simmers as well as the scenery flyers (on both platforms)
I would also argue that the ‘community’ is hardly limited to just those who turn up on this forum (a few more who are on Xbox might turn up here if the reception wasn’t as mixed as it is.
I badly want to agree with you, but the experience so far doesn’t suggest that. How long will the simmer community have to listen to empty promises before we see the real progress you’re holding out for?
It kind of depends on what you want. I’ve been having a blast with the sim since launch a month ago, but I can see there are some issues. I’m struggling to see anything I can’t work around. I trust those issues will be resolved but that’s not stopping me enjoying the sim as it stands.
If there was anything ‘game breaking’ (as the expression goes) I might feel more pessimistic but that’s not been my experience so far.
What is more disturbing though is the apparent abandonment of the VR side of the code. The entire wish list and bug list has gone completely unaddressed for well over 6 months.
They have been hard at work on updating their roadmap for VR and it will be shared soon!
Thank you so much for the response! I’m always so happy to see an official response to a genuine concern. It must be difficult to resist being forthcoming in your position as I imagine you can’t give away too much.
I hope the coming roadmap and proposed development contained within will turn my pessimistic frown upside down.
So much theatre over a flight simulation that is just a year old. There is a reason for the long commitment by the developers. Money equals longevity. They have found away to keep your little genre alive for the unseen future. There is no deception or broken promise’s. You should be very excited… MSFS is big enough for every level of flight simulation, beginner to extreme.
This is why real pilots train in simulators, to overcome situations in real world flying aircraft where things sometimes can break. Then they use these trainingsessions and stay cool using mind over matter.
Imo that is what simulation is about, learn to deal with situations “know thy selfs”
And this is exactly what this game/sim/ or what ever they will call it tomorrow.
We are just controlling some knob and potentiometers which translate itself on screen.
And it is fun in anyway
Trust me, the focus isn’t on Xbox. Some things are almost unplayable. Any long haul fight over 6h is almost guaranteed to CTD on approach to airport on Xbox and we all have the same hardware, too!
And we have one you guys rarely if ever get: instruments go black and become useless at random.
Don’t know where the focus is, but it’s definitely not on Xbox.
I’m 100% not a troll, I am a RW pilot who has been using VR for FS since 2015.
Seriously honest question, why is the current VR experience worse than FSX, a 15 year old simulator with Flyinside, a $20 addon and far inferior to XP’s VR experience ? Why release anything that is as bad as the current implementation. Its physically nauseating. I have powerful H/W and I get the best anyone can get, but its pre 2015 bad.
I keep my subscription up in the hope that things will improve, but now I only fire it up after an update just to see. Eventually I may get a surprise, but I don’t have quite the same optism as the the person you responded to.
Your answer to his question was the equivalent of someone saying ‘lets go to lunch sometime’. A lot of simmers , especially RW pilots who want to practice things that are not practical in a real plane or just want to practice VFR in an unfamiliar area use VR, it gives you the spatial awareness, its a real need. To release what they did is almost an insult, it has an entire library on youtube dedicated to it with futile attempts to get it at least as good as something from 5 years ago. I don’t understand why MS are not just honest, they are aiming at a market based on financial returns (which is fine) and the actual simmers who want more than pretty can then know where they stand and choose to stick around or just move on. A dangling carrot of we have planned the plan is very poor. I wouldn’t accept that in my day job, I’m a robotics engineer and I work with many programmers, so I’m fully aware of the environment and darfe I say the culture and I know exactly what you are saying. Its on a sprint in the future thats super low priority basically, which speaks to the direction, if the previous update didn’t shout it loud enough already… Every single PC Flight Sim on the market has usable VR, except this one. That really is bad in 2021. People say its only been out a year, but there’s been 40 years of MS FS innovation before it to leverage including the 1000’s of innovations people did outside of MS to make it better after they shelved it, including LM. Complaining is not my forte, but I’m tired of the pretty graphics smoke screen. Look at the rating this game has in the store, compare to other games.
It was actually the other way around IIRC. Asobo invested in creating the engine along with Black shark, showcased it to some top MS exec and the MS chief thought they were being shown real video footage. So maybe it was the pretty pictures that started it, but Asobo (who also delivered Plagues Tale) must have put a lot of effort in to get it to that point.
